The All American Girl who Forgot to be Chinese

          Elizabeth Wong wrote an essay that was published in the New York Times that gave a description of her struggle to resist her Chinese heritage. Targeting New York Times readers Wong uses sight, smell, and sounds to describe her experiences as an adolescent child.
           I think Wong's openess about her family and her description of the prinicpal impress me the most. I can almost sse and hear a slight chinese woman forcably toting a resistant child down the street while shouting out above all the commotion to get the best cut of meat or best bargain. Wisking herself stoicly into the crowd, commanding a sea of people to the side with her voice cutting to the nearest deal with a steel resolve.
           I can envision the the creepty principal spinning around  on his heels, or standing tight lipped with his hands grasped firmly behind his back. In my mind I seen an unattractive face, with half balding hair, and a thin stern stature. I wonder if the rest of the teachers started their day off with such obvious disapprovel. How did her parents think that they would flourish under such staunch influences.
           The last sentence,"At last I was one of you; not one of them. Sadly I still am."(The Struggle to Be An All American Girl, Elizabeth Wong) holds meaning for anyone who disconnects themselves from their family and then wished they hadn't. When Wong won the battle over the Chinese School and no longer had to go, she felt liberated. Maybe she finally felt that she was being given a lease to be who she wanted to be and not boxed in by her heritage.
           When this happened she didn't realize that to seperate herself from her heritage also seperated her from her family and the things that she would look back at as an adult that held an emotional signifigance. She, as a child, probably never thought she would long to be able to speak the words of her grandmother, or understand the little chinese slip ups that her mother made.
           Without knowing it, she gave away words that carried cultural signifigance and honor. Her parents can't use the words their parents used with them to show love and approval of an accomplishment or action. I am sure she had no idea that she would long to tell her father that she loved him in a way that he was taught was acceptable. She recongnized that she herself drove a wedge between her and her family, not just her heritage, that couldn't be pried out when she "culturally divorced" herself as she put it in her essay.